Building capacities for systemic change: a diversified roadmap in the context of VTT's service research network

The organisational and geographical scales of innovation systems are now more interlinked than ever. This means that the ramifications of systemic transformations flow through this meta-system faster than before and that these flows have complex effects. Due to this systemic complexity, the implications are also harder to anticipate. Research and technology organisations (RTOs), as key nodes in the innovation meta-system, should therefore develop at least two systemic capacities: 1) partial structural openness and fluidity that enable flexibility in responding to the systemic flows and 2) a horizontal anticipatory culture that integrates the critical knowledge in an RTO to build an internal future-oriented agency, anticipatory capacity and foresight sensibility. In this paper we propose that practices of technology roadmapping could be applied to building these strategic capacities in an RTO. We exemplify these roadmapping practices by briefly analysing a selected development process at VTT, namely VTT's Service Science and Business Network, as a case study.